Yeni Mao's practice centers on the distortion of archetypical narratives, through a range of mediums including sculpture, installation, photography, and video. The work uses a diverse artistic lexicon to explore the cyclical regeneration of history, often built on a certain event and the passage of that point time into mythology. He is especially interested in oppositions such as magic vs. modernity and authenticity vs. history. Yeni Mao lives and works in Mexico City and New York.

Yeni Mao was born in Guelph, Canada, and spent his developmental years in the United States (Michigan), Taiwan, and Sweden. His parents are of Chinese descent, from Malaysia and Shanghai, who moved to Canada to pursue academic careers in Science. This inheritance and traversing these various regions established an awareness of altered perceptions of history and the malleability of truths, especially across cultural environments. After earning his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he moved to San Francisco to apprentice in foundry work. Shortly thereafter, Mao relocated to New York, where his interest in craft led him to concentrate in architectural concept and fabrication. Mao returned to visual art, heavily influenced by the ideas and aesthetics behind the architectural modernist movement, in particular the ideas of new hope and new lives shaped by physical built environments, and the peculiar relationship between Modernism and magic. These subjects come with the concept of failure, modernism as a malleable state, and the relationship between craft and production. Mao’s practice begins with the layering of these interests over his own history.

Yeni Mao’s work has been featured in numerous national and international exhibitions. Recent solo exhibitions include “ Ripple and Shear” at Casa Lu in Mexico City, “The Conqueror” at Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, “Regatta” at Munch Gallery in New York and “Whiskey Papa” at Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery in Luxembourg. He has participated in a large variety of group exhibitions, including the IX Bienal De Artes Visuales Nicaraguenses, and at Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo, Anonymous Gallery, Present Company, Allegra LaViola Gallery, Invisible-Exports, Andrew Edlin Gallery, DOB Hualamphong Gallery, Hionas Gallery, Maquis Projects, and ROM for Kunst og Arkitektur. He has been awarded several residencies, including Casa Wabi in Mexico, OAZO-AIR in the Netherlands, Red Gate and Lijiang Studio in China, and The Fountainhead in Miami. Mao’s work has been written about in The New York Times, Time Out New York, The Advocate, The Village Voice, and the Bangkok Post.